It is sometimes desirable for golf club manufacturers or corporate owners of golf clubs to identify their corporate brand on the golf club shaft. It can also be desirable to apply some other design, identification, information, or coloring on a golf club shaft or other metal shaft for aesthetic or other purposes.
Prior art methods of applying branding to steel shafts typically involve applying a sticker to the shaft, which may not be aesthetically pleasing. Such stickers include silk screen stickers, which are subject to wear and/or peeling away from the shaft. Additionally, stickers may cheapen the look of a high quality golf club shaft, and are less than desirable to manufacturers and corporate owners. Application of a heat transfer decal to a composite golf shaft is described in Barelmann and Folek, U.S. Patent Application Publ. 2006/0178227, that is incorporated herein by reference.
Steel golf club shafts are often manufactured with an outer layer of chrome plating to prevent corrosion of the steel. However, this chrome layer makes it more difficult to apply designs of any kind to the golf club shaft. Prior art methods of applying branding to steel shafts using paint have not met with great success because of poor adhesion between chrome and paint.
Thus, a need remains for an improved method of branding and applying surface indicia to metal shafts, such as steel shafts, that provides good adhesion as evidenced by, for example, industry standard rub and cross-hatch tests.